I have a challenge for you:
Watch this video and try not to fall off your chair when this man starts to sing.
As people may have noticed by now (I don't see how they couldn't....) I've recently had and still have a great interest in the countertenor voice. Now my horizons have been broadened to include the rare phenomenon of the "male soprano" - Men whose voices for various reasons can go even higher than a countertenor voice. However they don't use falsetto like countertenors do, and their register doesn't go as low as that of countertenors. Many of them (though it's only a handful of singers who go by the term male soprano in the first place) don't even have a male sounding speaking voice.
As is the case with Radu Marian. His speaking voice has been described as "a wisp of smoke", which the author of the same article attributes to the fact that Radu, at 17, had severe laryngitis because he strained his voice trying to sing in the tenor range, which of course was too deep for him. Consequently he didn't talk, or go to school, for a whole year. He did eventually regain his vocal abilities, but his voice never changed like that of his peers. He still couldn't sing just as high as he could when he was a child (he claims that back then he could sing a whole octave higher), but his voice still soars higher than one would think is possible for a grown man.
Which he naturally finds himself defending every day - there are plenty of people who refuse to believe what their ears and eyes tell them; there is no way that voice can come from a man. No wonder he taught himself to talk back. At school he had a female singing teacher who boldly asked him straight out if he was a woman or a man, to which he replied "If you were a little bit younger, I would show you".
One can't help but feel a little sorry for a man whose talent evokes cliche questions rather than just please the ear, and who probably has to deal with those questions for the rest of his life, but Marian himself doesn't seem to let it get to him. Apart from the obvious alterations that comes with the life as a touring performer, Marian leads a fairly normal life. He and his Russian wife have been married for 7 years, he's deeply religious and apart from a somewhat slight frame and short stature, he looks nothing like his mysterious miracle voice would indicate.
Nevertheless, it might take time before one grows accustomed to such a voice, so I leave you with a second video of Radu's amazing talent.
